


Crashing Slowly

by weakinteraction



Category: Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (Emotion Picture)
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:31:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17040344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Finding old memories, making new ones.





	Crashing Slowly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [biprettydizzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/biprettydizzee/gifts).



"Wait, stop. Stop here!"

Jane applies the field brakes, looking across at Zen as she does. The look in Zen's eyes tells her instantly that whatever Ché thinks he remembers, it's as much a mystery to Zen as it is to Jane. But then, Ché was the one who was in the House for the shortest time before they escaped; he was only exposed to the Nevermind once or twice. They have to assume that his memories are the most complete, so if he seems to remember something it's definitely worth investigating.

They get out, cautiously. Jane sees how Zen's eyes automatically turn skyward, scanning for drones, even as Ché is running away from the road towards the beach.

Zen nods, satisfied as to their relative safety at least for the moment, and comes around to take Jane's hand. They follow Ché, though he has raced so far ahead that he is now coming back towards them from the shore.

"The ocean's so big," Zen says, squeezing Jane's hand. Jane follows her gaze: the breakers smashing rhythmically against the pebbles, stretching out in both directions as far as the eye can see, and who knows how much further beyond that?

"I think I like it," Jane says, and she does, but what she doesn't tell Zen is that it scares her too: big enough to drown in, to lose yourself in completely. Big enough to prove that anything and everything they might ever do is irrelevant.

Ché catches up to them.

"It's very pretty," Jane says.

"Majestic," Zen adds, and it isn't the word Jane would have gone for but it fits perfectly.

But Ché looks crestfallen. "You don't remember, do you?" He looks at them each in turn. "Neither of you."

"No," Jane says. "I'm sorry, I don't." She's looking so intently into his eyes that she senses rather than sees the minute shake of Zen's head.

Ché takes Jane's free hand and turns it -- gently, tenderly -- until the tattoo on her wrist is facing upwards.

Jane stares at it, uncomprehending. But Zen gives a loud gasp. "It was here, wasn't it?" Jane turns her gaze to watch as Zen slips from her grasp and runs out across the groyne. "Just _here_ ... I think."

Ché pulls Jane along to catch up, and it's only when they reach Zen that Jane notices the pricking of the tears in her eyes.

"I don't remember," she says.

Zen pulls them both into a hug. "They took so much."

"But we still have each other," Ché adds.

It's become almost a mantra, a little ritual the three of them have to help them cope with these situations, when the gaps in their memories seem like gaping chasms.

It takes Jane a moment to compose herself enough, after the hug breaks apart again, to say the last line: "We can make new memories."

Then she breaks down. "But tell me about the old ones. I know we promised we wouldn't, but if you _both_ remember--"

Zen kisses her tenderly on the cheek. "Of course," she whispers into Jane's ear. Ché rubs her wrist, and she looks again at the tattoo.

And Kane starts to remember. But not when she got it -- instead, what comes back to her all too easily is the feeling of the memory slipping away.

_`"War is old."` _

_"So is sex."_

_`"Let's play god."` _

_"You go--"_

"We built a fire," Zen says, loudly, firmly, and it takes a moment for Jane to realise that Zen has recognised her slipping into the fugue state, is pulling her back.

The ocean will not swallow her today. "A fire," Jane says. "Right."

"That's right," Ché says. "So I could sterilise ..."

Jane looks again at her forearm. "It was you who gave me this."

"But it was your design," Zen says.

"Mine?" Jane says.

"You were always the artist, out of the three of us," Ché says.

"I was?"

Zen nods. "I don't remember as much as Ché, but ... yeah."

In all sorts of different ways," Ché adds.

"Really?"

They both nod; their mouths are smiling but their eyes are filled with concern. _How much has she forgotten?_ they're thinking, but the fact that she can discern that from their expressions is what gives her hope. The connection between them is more than any one memory, deeper than just shared experience.

And even if it weren't, what shared experience could be more important than their escape from the House of the New Dawn?

"My name is Jane 57821 and I am--"

_`"--A DIRTY COMPUTER."` _

_"--a dirty computer."_

"--an artist." And even though she doesn't really remember it, her lovers' belief makes it true. "I am an artist," she says again, more confidently, an affirmation.

"There were other things we did by the firelight too, you know," Zen says. "As the sun went down ..."

"I think that goes without saying," Ché puts in.

"No, it's worth saying," Jane says. "And you know ... we can make new memories."

But what she means is: we can remake the old ones.

The night air is cold on her skin, but that just makes the feeling of Zen's and Ché's skin on hers even warmer by contrast.

They take it in turns to tenderly kiss her tattoo, and then ... everything.

Jane loses herself to the sensations, cold and hot, soft and hard, flickering firelight and twilight shadow, complementing and completing one another.

Time stops, perhaps even rewinds. Jane grasps, for a moment as she comes--

\--as she feels Ché come--

\--as she makes Zen come--

\--that memory is more than recollection. That her skin, her body remembers what her mind cannot. That memories can exist in the space and time created by the three of them, not any one individual processing node. Memory is distributed and continuous, not localised or discrete. And so the Nevermind can never steal it, not truly.

Afterwards that lie, tangled together. As Jane drifts into sleep, she listens to the sound of the waves, crashing slowly on the shore.

The waves are always crashing slowly, but the shore remains.

The three of them are an ocean, and each others' shores. They are _all_ crashing slowly, and it doesn't matter at all.


End file.
